This article gives a portrait of a biblical marriage that is by turns, romantic, redemptively significant, and exemplary: the marriage of Boaz and Ruth.

Source: The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, 2005. 3 pages.

Marriage to the Glory of God: The Marriage of Boaz and Ruth A Portrait of a Biblical Marriage that is by Turns, Romantic, Redemptively Significant, and Exemplary

So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife.

Ruth 4:13

Ruth – the book – unfolds along twin lines of thought: one on a macrocosmic and another on a microcosmic scale. The macrocosmic, or the big picture, is God’s glorious plan of redemption conceived in eternity and executed in time. We must never lose sight of that goal. At any one point in the Bible, we are to ask the question: What is happening to the promise that God made in Genesis 3:15 – that the seed of the woman is going to crush the head of Satan? The story of Ruth, set after the days of turmoil that immediately precede the time of the Judges, is one of the building blocks in the history of redemption. It tells of something deeply significant about how God accomplishes His purposes in history. But on the other end of the scale, there is another question, one that concerns a small and somewhat insignificant family: Naomi, Elimelech, Mahlon, and Chilion, and the consequent events that will bring Noami’s daughter-in-law, Ruth, into contact with her future husband, Boaz. What is God doing in their lives? And more pertinently for our purposes here, how will God bring Ruth and Boaz together? In discerning the hand of God at work in their lives we may, in turn, be enabled to discern the hand of God at work in our own.

The details need not concern us here, save to say that after ten years in Moab, Naomi has lost her husband and two sons. One of her daughters-in-law, Orpah, has now returned to her people, but the other, Ruth, has returned to Bethlehem along with Naomi. There, they have fallen in with a man called Boaz, in whose field Ruth has been gleaning. He is a near-kinsman, and levirate law demanded that the near-kinsman “redeem” the widow of a brother by marrying her and thereby providing for her. Boaz is not the nearest kinsman – a sub-plot in the narrative that adds significantly to the tension and eventual resolution in the providence of God. That duty rightly belongs to an other. That is the denouement of the story. “Howbeit there is a kinsman nearer than I” (3:12).

In chapter 3, Naomi is so desperate to have Ruth married that she has proposed the unthinkable. She has asked Ruth to go to the threshing floor dressed and perfumed (3:3), in the middle of the night (3:8) and lie at Boaz’s feet (3:4, 14)! No amount of contextualization by commentators can rescue Naomi from the charge of error. She is so desperate for this marriage that she is prepared to run ahead of the providence of God in order to secure it! Something of Boaz’s great integrity emerges in that he does not take advantage of the situation, and Naomi seems to have learned a lesson when she says to Ruth at the end of chapter, “Sit still …” (3:18).

Now in chapter 4 we uncover some interesting issues that relate to marriage and how we go about discerning what a good marriage may look like. Allow me to confine myself to the subject at hand.

1.  Will you have this MAN?🔗

What is interesting to note is that this man, Boaz, is presented to us as a preeminently godly and upright man. In chapter 3, Naomi had taken out the equivalent of an advertisement in a local newspaper, “Attractive Lady seeks eligible Bachelor with a View to marriage. Must get on with mother-in-law!” The fact that her midnight visit to the threshing floor did not result in disaster is entirely due to God’s overruling on the one hand and Boaz’s evident integrity on the other.

Chapter 4 begins with Boaz going up to the town gate and sitting there. What’s happening? Just this: the town gate is the place where justice is given. It was the place you went to if you had a case to settle. The elders would gather there and you could have your case heard and adjudicated.

The “case” here involves the issue of the “kinsman redeemer.” This is a man who is under obligation to redeem his deceased relative’s widow and ensure that his name be prolonged. It involved the responsibility of marriage and bearing children. The problem is that Boaz is not the nearest kinsman-redeemer. But Boaz obviously likes Ruth. For no other reason but a fondness for her, he seems to go out of his way to ensure that she gets this message loud and clear! The whole story at the end of chapter 3 whereby he gives her this enormous amount of barley is a token of his interest in her. There is something of great moral standing about this man Boaz and he realizes that he must now do something in order to win Ruth. That is why he is waiting at the gate of the city.

But there is something else not specifically mentioned though it is the sub-plot of the text: God has decreed to provide Boaz with Ruth as his wife. God was ordering things to fall out in such a way that these two are brought together. Naomi has tried to run ahead of God’s providence by this business of the threshing floor. But her stupidity has been wonderfully overruled. When the kinsman redeemer comes along (the story never mentions his name), it is obvious that he is not going to meet his obligations. As far as the story is concerned, he’s not important any more.

It is crucial to note that the way Boaz goes about acquiring a wife – a woman for whom his affections have already been kindled – is by applying the law of God to his life and the wisdom of God to his manner of living it. In effect he is applying what the covenant law had stipulated. He made God’s law his delight (Psa. 119:70). Incurable romantics will find this wholly disappointing, and even offensive. They seek for symphonic sounds, cascading waters, miraculous voices, and much else in the wooing of a life-partner. But Boaz knew that there would be no lasting joy in a relationship acquired illegally. Unless God was in this, there would be no blessing. Here is a picture of a man going to court and arguing a case, and making himself willing for the nearer kinsman to have Ruth, because that was his legal right!

Boaz is a walking illustration of Psalm 119: he has hidden the law of God in his heart. When the Holy Spirit produces Christ-like (Boaz-like!) obedience to His revealed law, we must not interpret this as legalism. Boaz already knew God’s grace; he was reflecting in turn what God had shown to him by giving his life in obedience.

This is what young men should seek to emulate and what women should most want if they desire to be in a godly marriage.

2.  Will you take this WOMAN?🔗

Naomi had uttered a prayer at the beginning of the story that now seems to return as the story comes to a close:

The LORD deal kindly with you … The LORD grant you that ye may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband. 1:8-9

In the second chapter, these words seemed to have found a response when Boaz had said, upon first encountering Ruth, that she had come to take refuge beneath the wings of God (2:12).

And what does that mean? Take a look at the prayer that is offered for Ruth by the elders in verses 11 and 12, and then, the narrative that follows of the wedding, her pregnancy, and the birth of a son in verses 13 to 15. God has turned Ruth’s life around. God will stop at nothing for those whom He is determined to bless. He has brought this young girl through testing and trying experiences in order to reach this point. Here is a young woman who has known a measure of grief and disappointment in her life. She has tasted the salty tears of widowhood and childlessness and wondered how she will ever survive. She has spent her time since coming to Bethlehem, gleaning in the fields, trying to scratch out an existence for herself and her mother-in-law. And now, all of a sudden, she finds the man of her dreams. There is the sound of wedding bells in the air. It’s a very happy story!

This does not mean that if we trust in the Lord as Ruth did, life will be happy and blissful and we’ll necessarily find the man or woman of our dreams. Interpreting historical portions of Scripture always necessitates care.

The chapter opens with Boaz sitting at the town gate (4:1). Actually the verb “sit” in 4:1 is the same word that is rendered “wait” at 3:18. It’s a very clever literary device. Naomi is telling Ruth to “wait,” and, in the very next verse, Boaz is “waiting” at the city gate. They are waiting on God. Everything about this story focuses on God’s unseen hand at work behind the scenes. It is about the provision of God. God guides and directs. “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.”

Does this mean that the Bible will tell me exactly whom I am to marry? The answer to that is Yes and No. If we mean, does the Bible tell me that I am to marry Miss X or Mr. Y, then the answer is No. I don’t think that’s the way it happens. I have heard some peculiar stories about people being “led” to certain verses and then applying tortuous exegetical and hermeneutical principles in order to ensure that these verses come out with the right answer, but this has more to do with autosuggestion than anything else. No, what the Bible does is talk about wisdom. It instructs us how to make wise choices, it helps us understand that there is a right way to go about things and a wrong way. And it always shows us how to take the best way and make the best choices. When a girl comes across your path (and I don’t mean that you should not actively look for one) then you are to ask a series of questions:

  • Would she make a good partner?
  • Is she godly?
  • Does she desire to be a godly wife?

You need to ask these questions because some girls wouldn’t make good partners at all, since they don’t fear God and are not sensible.

And – this is my point – you must trust God to lead you and provide for you. It seems to me that is what Ruth was doing. She was taking her mother-in-law’s advice and she is now waiting on God to guide and direct. I think that is what Boaz found the most attractive in her. I think he saw in her a girl who above everything else wanted to do what God says. And that’s beauty, real beauty.

At the end of the book, Naomi – this beautiful but scheming woman whose life has been so hurt and destroyed by the loss of three men, and that alone may explain why she throws herself into the future of her daughter-in-law, living out her dreams in her – is restored. She is sitting holding her grandson, the son of Boaz and Ruth, whose name is Obed.

And Obed is the father of Jesse, who in turn is the father of David, who in turn is the father of … Jesus!

Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,
Great David’s greater Son!James Montgomery

When you choose partners in the way these two did here, it sows the seeds of a marriage that is going to last and be pleasing in God’s sight.

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